From the point of view of national security our leaders are a pathetically naive bunch of people.

It is shocking that after very poor management of our limited human resources in the medical sector in terms of low wages and poor working conditions which saw between 80 and 300 nurses leaving the country for greener pastures in the UK the country is resorting to the use of CIA agents. Many more are planning to quit their country as it has failed to appreciate their invaluable service. The BDP regime has a strange solution to this brain drain. President Mogae, of all the people, ‘pleaded with the American government to help Botswana with Peace Corps to help arrest the problem of shortage of human resources in the health sector’ (Midweek Sun, March 26 2003). The programme of the Peace Corps had thankfully been terminated some 6 years ago because Botswana is a middle income country that does not need such ‘volunteers’. Sadly, it is being revived.

Peace Corps were founded in 1961 during the presidency of John Kennedy as part of the sophisticated and multi-faceted propaganda arsenal of the notorious CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) aimed at the ‘Third World’. On the surface the Peace Corps are supposed to be a voluntary organisation and yet they are part of the CIA strategy of using seemingly innocuous organisations including religious organisations like Johovah’s Witnesses to infiltrate the ’Third World’ and gather intelligence information. All its members of the Peace Corps are carefully screened by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Indeed the first head of the Peace Corps was millionaire Sergeant Shiver, Jr who was not only a member of the CIA but a friend and confidant of the then Director of the CIA. Even the late Pan Africanist Philip Matante of the BPP was much more security conscious that the BDP regime hence his rhetorical question; ‘why don’t they volunteer in their own countries’ where poverty still stolks the streets of the richest country in the world.

President Mogae is obviously following in the footsteps of the Seretse Khama the first President of Botswana who when faced with the rising militancy of the working class in the 1970s went out of his way to invite the CIA to come and castrate the trade union movement. Of course it is the same government that gave part of precious land to the American Voice of America to broadcast their poisonous propaganda on our soil and air waves. Khama invited the notorious CIA agent Irving Brown of the Africa-American Labour Centre (AALC) - another arm of the CIA - which was played a central role in the construction of the Botswana Trade Union Education Centre and has dominated the class collaborationist training of our trade unionists. The current lack of class consciousness of the working class movement and its leadership is explained to a very large extent by the false trade union education it received from the AALC.

What is even more concerning is fact that that this childish nativity of consorting with dangerous organisations like the CIA takes place right under the noses of army generals who have been roped into government. Are these men and women not are of the tragic track record of the CIA around the globe? How can a right thinking government go out of its way to invite CIA into our hospitals and clinics instead of training more doctors and improving their working conditions? The so-called Peace Corps volunteers have been exposed and expelled in many African, Middle Eastern and Asian counties for acts of subversion and spying and yet in Botswana they have found a second home. In countries like Tanzania, Indonesia, Iran and Turkey Peace Corps CIA agents have been exposed and kicked out. Not so in our naive Botswana.

Concerned Patriot.

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Story Source: Mmegi Online

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Botswana; Intelligence Issues

I read this story with a disheartened soul. This is because I did not know that such things happened in Our "pure democratic country. How hypocritical is liberty? The main problem which I think habours such ills to be known to everyone is because the media in our country is state controlled. The masses who are mostly the peasants and who do participate in votes more than in the planning of the country are marginalised when it comes to national awareness. Their lack of contribution and lack of sceptism do not make the history of our country. Rather it is the leaders, who with the help of foreigners plan for our country. But the masses, because of their ignorance like me when I did not know that such things as the recruiting of CIA agents, see everything to be normal. The media in our country fails to offer the masses the right reciepe to their ignorance, which comes as a result of the biased governement media channels.